Valve has added a new set of family features to the beta version of the Steam client, allowing users to share access to games - family groups. They replaced Steam Family Sharing and the family browsing feature.
The main thing about family groups:
- A maximum of six people can be in a family group. At the same time, their accounts must be from the same region;
- After joining the group, participants get access to all the games in each other's libraries. An important caveat: game developers can disable the ability to share their projects in family groups at any time;
- By playing games from the library of other members of the group, the user will create their own saves and receive their own achievements;
- A group member can launch a game from another member's library, even if that member is playing something himself at that moment;
- if there are several copies of the same game in the group's shared library, then several group members can run them simultaneously;
- The group can consist of both adults and children. The parent account can send invitations to a group, set up children's access to certain games, store, community and chats, limit children's playing time, track their activity and approve children's requests to purchase games;
- children cannot leave the group on their own. If an adult leaves the group, then he will be able to create a new group or join another one only after a year;
- if a member of the group is banned from the game from another user's library, the ban will extend to the owner of the game.